THINGS WE WANT Reviews
THINGS WE WANT Reviews
THINGS WE WANT Reviews#1
Posted: 11/7/07 at 7:51pm
The AP is Positive:
"The New Group's off-Broadway production of "Things We Want," written by Jonathan Marc Sherman and directed by Ethan Hawke, is a powerful and hilarious vision of a family that constantly struggles to survive in a world that has not been kind to them. It's safe to say that Hawke's foray into directing, following several acclaimed stage roles in recent years, was a success.....
.... Still, all the characters benefit from Sherman's clever, edgy writing. The characters hilariously quote "Pinocchio" as they offer advice to each other. In looking back on his troubled childhood, Charlie recalls how Sty destroyed his toy oven by burning an entire family of dolls while "playing Holocaust."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/07/AR2007110702211.html?nav=rss_artsandliving/entertainmentnews
re: THINGS WE WANT Reviews#2
Posted: 11/7/07 at 8:08pm
Variety is Mixed-to-Negative:
"Thanks to accomplished tech backup, it looks, feels and sounds like a real place. But almost nothing being said in Jonathan Marc Sherman's phony comedy about the tenuous balance of happiness and stability rings true. Pairing artificial, movie-ish dialogue with an actor in the director's chair is an unhappy combination, and, while Ethan Hawke uses the space confidently, he allows his talented cast to push mannered material further into self-consciousness.
Sherman made some noise as a writer before turning 20 with "Women and Wallace" and then fell off the map for several years, due partly to a bout of alcoholism.
The vehicle for his return, unsurprisingly, deals in dry, often humorous fashion with dependency, depression, suicide and emotional volatility, but the glimmers of authentic experience are well disguised. Instead, the writing is tiresomely in thrall to David Rabe (both Hawke and cast member Josh Hamilton appeared in the New Group's "Hurlyburly" revival) and to a lesser degree David Mamet, with a studied hipster veneer and ample dollops of cliche and contrivance. Actors, however, tend to love this stuff, which explains the names involved."
http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117935350.html?categoryid=33&cs=1
re: THINGS WE WANT Reviews#2
Posted: 11/7/07 at 8:25pm
Talkin Broadway is Mixed:
"Film and stage star Ethan Hawke, who starred in The New Group's Hurlyburly in early 2005, has staged the show sensibly and starkly, and keeps things fluid despite the writing's frequent stops and starts. Derek McLane's stuffy apartment set and Jeff Croiter's just-after-dark lighting are crucial for setting the atmosphere, but Hawke's helping carry it through the script and the performances does more than anything else to hold Things We Want together.
Neither are the actors aided by Sherman's plastically pungent dialogue, but they generally manage to maintain undercurrents of good-spiritedness that offset some of the play's inherent ugliness. Dinklage is especially good at this, finding sobering comedy in the alcoholic Sty without making him the archetypal happy boozehound. Dano and Kazan wallow in just the proper amounts of self-pity and self-delusion. Hamilton has the most difficulty, never entirely convincing as being caught under Dr. Miracle's spell, but he's considerably better as the destructive, deflated gasbag he later becomes.
Interestingly, there's very little difference between Teddy before and Teddy after; he's just operating under a different influence. Whether it's the grouping of seven, five, three, and one, or of the 12 steps that characterize Alcoholics Anonymous (which also figures into the play), Sherman's point is that it won't help you help you get where you're going - the only way to survive the 10-story freefall of life is to realize that what you want is mutable and what you need is forever. Things We Want succeeds only intermittently because it and its playwright have so much trouble distinguishing between the two."
http://www.talkinbroadway.com/ob/11_07_07.html
re: THINGS WE WANT Reviews#3
Posted: 11/7/07 at 9:28pm
Theatremania is Positive:
"Sherman's dialogue has an offbeat sensibility and is peppered with amusing one-liners. He makes it clear that none of the brothers has actually dealt well with the grief and confusion caused by their losses. Hawke's production brings this out nicely, demonstrating the brothers' emotional damage that has resulted in self-destructive tendencies and a love-hate relationship that they feel towards one another."
http://www.theatermania.com/content/news.cfm/story/12011
re: THINGS WE WANT Reviews#4
Posted: 11/7/07 at 10:20pmOh good!!! I am glad it's getting some positive reviews. Glad i got my ticket now. Just in case.
re: THINGS WE WANT Reviews#5
Posted: 11/7/07 at 10:23pmYeah, so far the critics have been a lot kinder than I thought they would be which is great. I'm looking forward to seeing it in a couple of weeks.
re: THINGS WE WANT Reviews#6
Posted: 11/7/07 at 10:31pmMe too, I love Paul Dano and Peter D. Should be fun.
re: THINGS WE WANT Reviews#7
Posted: 11/7/07 at 10:35pm
Here's the review summary for Brantley in the Times -- it looks like it'll be mixed:
"For a certain breed of male New Yorker, “Things We Want,” Jonathan Marc Sherman’s thickly whimsical comedy of despair, has to have the highest cool quotient of any show in town. To begin with, it’s a production of the New Group, longtime showcase to quirky movie actors who want stage cred. Like Ethan Hawke, who directs here. Or the indie film stars Paul Dano and Peter Dinklage. Or Josh Hamilton, a longtime Sherman interpreter. Unfortunately “Things We Want,” while agreeably acted and directed, feels like an internal monologue distributed among four characters. Despite their surface differences, they all sound as if they are channeling the same voice."
http://theater2.nytimes.com/gst/theater/tdetails.html?id=1191075896182
re: THINGS WE WANT Reviews#8
Posted: 11/7/07 at 10:48pmI guess we can be a little grateful it will be mixed and not panned or negative.
re: THINGS WE WANT Reviews#9
Posted: 11/7/07 at 11:00pmat least he's writing again. Right?
re: THINGS WE WANT Reviews#10
Posted: 11/7/07 at 11:07pmI can't wait to see this. I think Zoe Kazan is a brilliant actress.
re: THINGS WE WANT Reviews#11
Posted: 11/7/07 at 11:13pm
Newark Star-Ledger is Mixed:
"Aside from craving personal happiness in general, Jonathan Marc Sherman never makes clear what his four characters actually desire in "Things We Want." That's a significant problem with the story of Sherman's latest play. Fortunately, strong acting renders these people so urgently that their lack of motivation may be partly overlooked by viewers in the heat of performance.
Certainly the New Group's off-Broadway production of "Things We Want," which opened tonight at the Acorn space in the Theatre Row complex, realizes this underdeveloped play into a passably intriguing show....
...Then again, Sherman writes a lot of playful, pleasurable, serio-comical dialogue. Making his directorial debut with this production, Ethan Hawke inspires a worthy cast to garner the maximum amount of entertainment from Sherman's chit-chat .....Realistic visuals provided by the designers are nothing special, but get the job done. What next needs to be done is to sit Sherman down for rewrites to augment what looks here like a play wanting in information."
http://www.nj.com/entertainment/arts/index.ssf/2007/11/its_hard_to_get_things_we_want.html
re: THINGS WE WANT Reviews#12
Posted: 11/8/07 at 10:44am
A few more --
NY Post gives it a Star-and-a-half:
"The playwright's attempts to explore the way we wrestle with the ghosts from the past and the underlying resentments that can consume even the closest of relationships are ineffective. The characters are one-note, their motivations inexplicable other than to provide dramatic plot twists.
The pungent dialogue, reminiscent of David Rabe's "Hurlyburly" - which director Ethan Hawke starred in a few years back for the same company - is crafted more for comic shock value than psychological realism.
But then, directing may not be Hawke's forte. In "Things We Want," these actors, as talented and worth seeing as they are, seem to founder - that is, when you can see them in the overly dim lighting."
http://www.nypost.com/seven/11082007/entertainment/theater/a_thing_we_dont_want_274359.htm
re: THINGS WE WANT Reviews#13
Posted: 11/8/07 at 10:47am
The Daily News is Positive:
"There are three drunks sitting around a high-rise apartment. That sounds like either the setup for a serious drama or a bad joke.
But the alcohol-addled trio are actually prime ingredients in Jonathan Marc Sherman's edgy and superbly acted dramedy "Things We Want," which opened last night at the Acorn Theatre under the assured direction of Ethan Hawke......
....Sherman captures the rhythms and quirks of conversation (such as random topics like Pinocchio, bonsai and vomit) with bull's-eye accuracy, whether it's among brothers or between a man and a woman.
For outstanding acting, the cast goes four for four. Dano, Dinklage and Hamilton make each brother full-blooded, amusing and real. Kazan's nuanced performance elevates Stella, damaged goods with skimpy morals and skirt to match, to more than just a bad-girl cliché."
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/culture/2007/11/08/2007-11-08_booze_brothers_lift_their_spirits_in_thi.html
re: THINGS WE WANT Reviews#14
Posted: 11/8/07 at 10:54am
NY Sun is Mixed-to-Positive:
"Anniversaries tend to be gloomy occasions for the three heavy-drinking brothers at the center of "Things We Want," the sporadically insightful but ultimately wearying play by Jonathan Marc Sherman......
Mr. Sherman, a former wunderkind playwright ("Sophistry," "Women and Wallace") whose decade-long absence from the stage stemmed largely from a lengthy bout with alcoholism, has gained the perspective to both mock and honor the clichés of recovery. (The play's title stems from one such sequence, a summation of Dr. Miracle's crackpot theories.) And he shows a keen eye for the shifts and resentments inherent in three orphaned young men forced to take turns parenting one another.
Mr. Sherman would appear to have more regrets than many of his illustrious peers. And while only he can say whether they are better regrets, his willingness to articulate them is encouraging and occasionally even eye-opening. Once he regains his ability to chip away at his language and present his unsparing message with fewer, better words, the result should be a happy one."
http://www.nysun.com/article/66086
re: THINGS WE WANT Reviews#15
Posted: 11/8/07 at 11:01am
And here's the full Times Review from Brantley:
"All the characters have plenty of nasty but cute dialogue, garlanded with standard offbeat cultural references. (My favorite line: “Payback will be swift and smell like salmon.”) The performers, who play nicely together, deliver such lines with obvious relish.
But the play hinges on 180-degree reversals of personality that make more sense in theory than practice. As enjoyable as it is to watch Mr. Hamilton, an expert at depicting fatuity, plying his well-honed specialty in two extreme emotional keys, I didn’t buy Teddy’s wholesale transformation between Acts I and II.
But let’s consider the broader context here. Asked what would really make him happy, Mr. Dano’s Charlie answers, “I think I’d create my own little world.” Now listen to the 20-year-old Mr. Sherman, in an interview in 1988, talking about what drew him to writing plays: “The idea that I could invent my own world and tell people what to say in it.”
“Things We Want” is by no means Mr. Sherman’s best play. But it is comforting to know that his wistful belief in make-believe, and the infectious pleasures it affords, has survived."
http://theater2.nytimes.com/2007/11/08/theater/reviews/08thin.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1194537375-TZUPUMavgE20uznPciWcqg
re: THINGS WE WANT Reviews#16
Posted: 11/22/07 at 10:06pmDoes anyone think this will be on tkts on saturday? I need something to replace Cyrano.
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